The object of this research proposal is the improvement of the care of burned patients. We believe that the most rational way to achieve this end is to focus our research efforts along critical problem areas in the treatment of burned patients. The overall approach is a coordinated multidisciplinary effort involving clinicians and basic scientists carrying out clinical studies correlated with multidisciplinary-based laboratory investigations, each examining the same traumatized subject extending from in vivo studies to organ perfusion, organ culture, and cellular investigations. The areas that have been identified for investigation are: 1) gastrointestinal function after thermal injury, 2) effect of burn injury on substrate metabolism, 3) burn injury extension, 4) burn injury - protein, amino acid and energy metabolism, 5) molecular pathology of healing and burn scar, and 6) burn trauma cellular endocrine response.